How to Remove Medical Bills from Your Credit Report

When you’re sick or injured enough to need significant medical care, the last thing you want to think about is how you’re going to pay your medical bills. Even more distressful is just how much medical bills on your credit report can impact your financial future..

With medical bills remaining the largest factor for Americans declaring bankruptcy, it’s clear that the nation’s largest epidemic is actually medical debt.

So, what you can you do keep medical bills from ruining your finances? Is there a way to get your credit back on track once you’ve been saddled with immense medical debt? It’s not always easy, but there are strategic actions you can take to decrease the effect medical bills have on your credit score. Read on to find out what they are..

How Medical Bills Affect Your Credit

The good news is that medical debt only affects your credit if it goes to a collection agency. The bad news is that there is no way to know how quickly your medical provider sends unpaid bills to collections.

Changes in 2017

For example, Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion now wait until a medical bill has been delinquent for 180 days before adding it to a consumer’s credit report. This is helpful because the health insurance process is slow and even if something is covered, even partially, reimbursements may take time to process.

As soon as you find out your debt is going to collections, it’s wise to figure out what the date of delinquency. Then you’ll know how much time you have to get the outstanding bill taken care of.

Unpaid Medical Collections

Currently, all unpaid collections are equally weighted on the FICO 8 scoring model, but the newest version, FICO 9, does not count medical as heavily as other types of debt.

Unfortunately, it’s likely to take time for the majority of lenders to implement the new scoring model when analyzing loan applications. VantageScore 3.0 doesn’t count paid collections at all but isn’t used as widely as FICO.

Even if you don’t know of any medical debt on your credit report, it’s smart to check your report every year just to make sure. You can get all three of your credit reports for free to ensure all your information is accurate.

Collection agencies are required to follow specific protocols for notifying you of delinquent medical bills, but they don’t always do that. Plus, even if you’ve paid off a collection, there may have been an error in updating the status from unpaid. So check your report to make sure an obscure medical collection isn’t dragging down your credit without your knowledge.

How to Remove Medical Collections From Your Credit Report

Even if you try your best to get on a payment plan and avoid having your debt go to medical collections, it’s sometimes impossible to avoid. The unfortunate truth is that nearly 20% of American have unpaid medical debt. So what can you do once it’s there? You have a couple different options.

If you can pay the bill, you might be able to convince the collection agency to remove the item completely from the credit bureaus. They are not obligated to do this, but it’s worth asking.

If you were never notified about the amount owed or were wrongfully charged, contact the original care provider and ask them to remove your account from collections and pay them directly. If that doesn’t work, file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Disputing Medical Collections

When disputing errors on your credit report, whether they’re medical related or not, it’s important to document every step you take. Make copies of everything: your bills, receipts, and letters to and from the medical provider or debt collector. If you reach an agreement on the phone, ask the other party to send confirmation in writing so that you have a record of the arrangement.

In the event your credit report indicates that a paid medical bill is still unpaid, you dispute the account with the credit bureaus directly. Just remember that you have to repeat the process with each credit bureau that has the medical collection on your credit report. The credit bureaus are required to follow up with you within 30 days of receiving your complaint, so mark your calendar to make sure they do.

When you’re dealing with large amounts of medical debt, try your hardest to avoid it going to collections and showing up on your credit report. Ask your medical provider for assistance in coming up with a payment plan that works for both of you.

Never be afraid to negotiate and make sure no one has made any errors along the way with your account. This holds true even if your medical debt does appear on your credit report.

Check that the delinquency date and payment status are accurate because it’s all too easy for someone to have made a clerical error at some point. You certainly can recover from excessive amounts of medical debt. While it takes a good deal of time and persistence, your diligence can often result in medical bills staying far away from your credit report.

How to Prevent Medical Bills from Destroying Your Credit

Just as it is with our physical health, prevention is the best cure for our financial health. Once you’ve recovered from your medical issue, start figuring out what your bills are going to look like.

When you first receive a bill and can’t pay it off right away, contact the medical provider to find out if you can sign up for a monthly payment plan. Payment plans with hospitals and doctors offices typically don’t charge interest, and they shouldn’t send the medical debt to a collection agency if you make regular payments.

You can also consider applying for a low interest personal loan in the event your provider doesn’t offer monthly payments. It’s never ideal to have to pay interest on top of the principal balance, but it could prevent you from having the account go into delinquency and show up on your credit report.

Another tactic is to ask for balance forgiveness altogether. Again, this can be done directly through your care provider and should be attempted before your debt goes to a collection agency. Write a letter to the provider explaining your financial situation and how burdensome your monthly payments have become.

This is most effective if your health insurance company charged the care as out-of-network because they will have already paid the provider for in-network services. That means the provider has already received some payment for the work completed. This tactic isn’t a sure thing, but it’s definitely worth the try when your debt is weighing you down.

If a collection agency does contact you, offer to pay right away with the contingency that they don’t report your medical bills to the credit bureaus. Hopefully, you can work out some sort of payment plan to get back on track, even if it takes a while.

You want to avoid having any medical collections appear on your credit report at all costs. Not only are they difficult to remove once they are on there, just one medical item can drop your credit score by as much as 100 points.